Sahara one night sand

On a day when the weirdest thing was the weather a small but select group of GoodGym runners met at Splashpoint. Tonight we welcomed back Lucy for her second GG task together with Duncan , Gill and Beth. Special mention to Belinda on a well earned holiday and massive GG healing vibes to Sue who has broken her knee after a horse incident. GG visitors coming your way next week !

This hurricane has my head swirling

Sailing close to the windy coastline of Worthing we opted for a sheltered route for our warm up through the precinct before arriving for our first visit to 'Stepping Stones' which is one of Worthing churches homeless projects. We were warmly met by Alistair who tasked us with a garden tidy up.

Weeding around the bush

After a distribution of tools we set about raking,weeding and pruning with a warm glow of head torches illuminating the garden.

To Dark up the wrong tree

30 minutes later and despite the darkness the beds had a complete makeover. Gone were the tall weeds and overgrown bushes to be replaced with smart looking earthy beds. The team were as energetic as follows

Duncan - Hoe hoe Lucy - Don't go raking my heart Beth - Weeding lights Gill - Pruning streak Alistair - All weeding aside

Lost but not least

After a tidy up and cheery goodbye we headed off west incorporating alternate tree and lampost sprints before hitting the seafront for some wind assisted running. It was all going so smoothly until I realised that I needed to be reunited with my car key that I had left at the task . So the girls made a slight detour back to the task to pick it up whilst Duncan set off on a wind assisted effort run back to base and then adding extra mileage in his legs by running back to meet us. Unfortunately Beth and I managed to misplace Lucy and Gill who literally went 'around the houses' looking for us and also driving Beth and I around several blocks trying to relocate them ! My fretful state was thankfully relieved when we all reunited along the precinct along with Duncan too. Happy times returned ( Phew !)

** As blind as a boot**

As we arrived back at my car there was another funny moment of madness when I was standing by the wrong car ( same colour and shape) trying to open the boot. Imagine the hilarity when we looked down the line of cars to see mine standing perfectly wide open!

The boot is on the other foot

Duncan experienced what it was like to stand in my shoes for few minutes with some amusing post run moments of trying on my Hoka's accompanied by Lucy's sloe gin and vodka making stories that would 'make your hair sand on end'

Although the nights are dark you are always assured of a bright welcome at GoodGym Worthing. Hope to see you next week

All the best

Julia :)

Another fantastic turnout this evening for GoodGym Norwich.

A big welcome to new runners Lucy, Millie & Katy

A massive congratulations to Bill for doing his 10th Group Run!

This week Katy was our back runner

Tonight's task was a marine litter pick around the Riverside Road area. It was a nice 1.6km distance each way.

On arrival we were greeted by Lottie who is from Keep Britain Tidy's River Care team. She had all the kit we needed and I put everyone in groups and set them on their ways.

Catherine & Samantha found a couple of frogs while on their adventure, with the former being concerned she was disturbing them mating.

I did take a photo of one of the frogs but it didn't come out very well (not a photo of them mating obviously!).

The team covered a big area this evening but for some reason it was actually quite clean already so there wasn't a huge amount of litter to be collected.

Once we finished we regrouped on Bishops Gate Bridge to return the equipment to Lottie.

It was then quite handy that Gas Hill was right opposite us :-) so the challenge was for everyone to make it to the top of Norwich's notorious peak, whether they ran or walked... and everyone made it so no-one peaked too soon (always a good thing).

After a recovery back down Gas Hill, we headed back towards The Forum. 1st stop was for the sprint challenge on Gentleman's Walk. 2nd stop was a little fitness session outside The Forum. This included 3 rounds of push-ups on each step then box jumps on each step. For anyone that wanted to I gave them an option of doing the Wheelbarrow up the steps, which Alex managed to do while 'twerking' at the same time.

Next week's run takes us to Joseph's Other Coat Charity Shop.

32 runners ran 3k, did a hill session , and cleared a meadow of rubbish.

If anyone would have told me we'd have 32 runners at GoodGym Norwich by the 7th week I'd probably have laughed in your face hahaha... well tonight it just happened!

We had a nice 1.6km route each-way as we were heading to a meadow near Cow Tower, which belongs to the Great Hospital... a building that has been around for over 700 years (that's probably the only bit of history my brain knows).

Again, we had several new runners - 11 in fact so too many to name but our members gave them a warm welcome and made them feel at home straight away.

We congratulated everyone who took part in Run Norwich 10k on Sunday.

Colin got his docs checked to he can now be DBS checked so he can go on our Coach & Mission runs... you can do the same by bringing your ID docs to me before or after any Monday evening run.

A thank you to Carl & Laura for being back runners.

As tonight's run was a shorter run I had some spicy workouts planned for the group... keep reading to see what they were.

After the warm up and a very long head count, we headed to our destination, which took us through the beautiful grounds of the Norwich Cathedral - it did give me flash backs of the Run Norwich 10k from the day before but luckily this time we were running downhill.

We were greeted by Neil and he explained the area that we could do a litter/rubbish collection on so the group got into pairs, got themselves some gloves and bin liners and off they went... just like The Wobbles.

After 30 minutes I got everyone to collect in all the rubbish they had collated and I was quite astonished with how well they'd all done - there was bike wheels, a sign from 2013, a bed, a mattress etc. There was technically around 15 hours put into that by our awesome volunteers, which I'm very proud of them for doing.

So after the task there had been rumours that something may occur by the very steep and nearby Gas Hill... and these rumours were true! We did a 8-minute Kenyan Hills routine, which is a continuous loop so you take the ascend very steady and focus on moving your arms but then you take the descent quicker and don't treat it as a recovery. After 8 gruelling minutes (and many death stares) we had a couple of minutes recovery before heading back towards The Forum.

The only problem was I wasn't finished yet... we still had 10 minutes to kill :-) so coincidentally there was a nice rectangle shaped grass area within the Cathedral grounds so we stopped for a 10-minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible). This consisted of 5 burpees, running, 10 push-ups, animal walk/crawl/jump, 5 v-sits, running, 10 squats and another animal walk/crawl/jump - all exercises that will assist with running performance.

After the 10 minutes I did a quick head count to see if I was still anyones friends hahaha and we headed back to The Forum for a stretch and finished the evening with a trip to the pub, which over half of us were able to attend, which is a fantastic turnout.

Next week we have a similar task and distance run on the Marriott's Way. Sign up here.

Tonight we had a GoodGym Norwich record turn out of 22 runners!!

We had several people making their maiden GoodGym appearance so a big welcome to Megan , Lizzie , Rob , Alex , Toby , Katherine & Rowena . It's great to still see plenty of new faces joining us to do good in the community.

A well done to Catherine for getting her DBS docs checked so she can be able to do our Coach Runs & Mission Runs.

After getting all the names on the sign in sheet, Paul & Laura confirmed as back runners, we started off with a interesting warm-up of backwards up the steps and forwards down them... my camera was ready for anyone who was going to trip over ;-)

For the outward run, I gave the team the task of discussing which two types of biscuits I had in my bag for when we finished later on... I was then getting rather concerned as everyone was saying what their favourites were... and they weren't what was in my bag haha.

Tonight's task was running 4km to the Earlham Early Years Centre to treat a new summer house. After a slight 'Hitch' with finding the correct entrance, Alex seemed to know the area a little better than me and we managed to get the gates open and our flock of runners in.

Everyone grabbed themselves a paint brush and Robert stirred up the tubs of treatment and then everyone was away! I did pre warn everyone not to have a paint fight and they were well behaved.

We kind of extended the time limit as it was one of those jobs you just couldn't leave half done but everyone did an amazing job, over 8 hours or man/women power went into that.

Once doen we set off back for the 4km return journey, which had more down hill until we reached Grapes Hill :-) at this point I felt quite kind that I gave the team the option of either running up it or take a flatter route around St Benedicts Street but everyone decided they wanted to run up Grapes Hill... so we did.

It was another fantastic GoodGym experience and a lot of people mentioned how satisfied they were doing this evening's task.

Oh and the biscuits were Ginger Nuts and Shortbread Fingers!

You can sign up to next week's task .

As I arrived towards The Forum I was praying several Good Gym runners would also be braving the rain this evening... it pretty much had been raining all day in Norwich non stop and it wasn't looking like it was going to disappear anytime soon... but of course the weather doesn't stop our runners at GoodGym, we go out in all conditions and in fact we had our 2nd largest group run so far!

It was great to welcome new GoodGym runners Catherine, Carl, Karen and Melanie.

Tonight's task was to move a big pile of wood at a Scout Group in Lakenham

Our run took us through the picturesque Lakenham Way, a route I myself have never been down before. Tonight's pace was pretty fast too, I was impressed with every runner and back runner Laura ensured the newer runners were well supported.

On arrival we saw a big pile of wood and were thinking "we ain't going to get all that moved surely!"

Alun greeted us and explained where it all needed moving to, our GoodGym volunteers got there Gloves on and there was never wasting time, they got stuck straight in.

The wood was in all shapes and sizes and my favourite quote of the evening was Lydia's "I've got a really long one".

The guys smashed the task and were getting a little excited that they might have an early finish (shame they didn't know what I had in-store for them).

Once we packed up and said thanks to Alun, we started to head back and this was when I announced we would (well they would) be doing a circuit session in Chapelfield Gardens when we got back... cue several moans and groans and offers to do other tasks at the Scout Group hahaha.

We arrived at Chapelfield Gardens and I did a quick head count to make sure no-one skived off. We started with a continuous circuit (AMRAP) of burpees, saints, star jumps and bear crawls :-) this was also the time where I was no longer anyone's friend. After this everyone thought it was all over... but I had other intentions so to finish up they had to do the 600 metre perimeter of Chapelfield Gardens as quickly as possible.

Another fantastic turnout and a great evening with an awesome bunch of people.

Details of next week's run ... get signed up :-)